Burning Out
by Obsidian3
Summary: Josie knew it was dangerous, but she had to at least TRY and stop the senseless sacrifices. Prequel to Summer Storm, mostly OC cast.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer:** Still don't own Carmilla (the series), or any recognizable characters.

 **Author's Note:** So, after careful deliberation - or coin flipping, one of the two - I've decided to tackle the prequel to _Summer Storm_ next. Not sure how long of a story this will be - since it **IS** a prequel, you already know how it ends. I guess we'll just have to see if I get inspired as I write. (It happened with _Let's Pretend_ , so it might well happen here, too, for all I know.) Aside from maybe one or two characters, I'm going to have to invent pretty much everyone, and I have no events from the show to revise to fit the story, both of which will be a new thing for me, in terms of Carmilla stories.

Here goes...

* * *

 **Aberaeron,Ceredigion, West Wales, U.K.**

 **September 19th, 1892**

 _The mighty warrior stalked through the darkened forest in search of her prey._

 _She had to be careful, she knew. The creature she was hunting was no mindless beast, but a cunning and ruthless Unseelie predator. She'd never encountered a Winter fae before, but she'd heard enough to know they were all exceedingly dangerous - a description that was more than accurate when it came to a redcap. This one had been terrorizing the nearby village, murdering travelers and dying its hat with its victims' blood. Supposedly, redcaps needed to kill regularly, for if the blood staining their hats dried out, they would die. She didn't know if she believed that, since the fae seemed to pretty much live forever unless they were killed, and no fae she knew - all of whom were incapable of speaking any words that were untrue - had ever said such a thing to her. Ultimately, though, it didn't matter. This redcap showed no signs of stopping his killing spree, so she was just going to have to_ _ **make**_ _him stop._

 _She stepped carefully over an exposed root, moving as quickly but stealthily as she could so that her armor would make as little noise as possible. She'd debated simply walking along the road into town, as that was where all the murders that they knew of had taken place, but had decided that would leave her too exposed. There were, after all, those who thought her current quest was too dangerous, and would have sought to stop her. It would also have made it easy for the redcap to ambush her. This way, at least, she would have cover to duck behind, should she need it. And who knew? Maybe she would be able to sneak up on the redcap. That would be appropriately ironic, she felt._

 _She couldn't count on that, though._

 _The sky was clear, moonlight illuminating the forest almost as brightly as daylight, to her. She gripped her sword nervously, though she worked to keep her anxiety off of her face. Fear was a weakness that she couldn't afford when dealing with the Unseelie, she knew. If she was afraid of them - if she let them_ _ **know**_ _that she was afraid of them - she'd be giving them an advantage. She had to be strong. There were too many people counting on her to fail._

 _A twig snapped behind her._

 _She immediately whirled around, bringing up her sword without thinking to deflect the blade swinging at her head. Redcaps, she knew, tended to carry pikestaffs, weapons with wooden shafts and metallic heads. (Not iron, despite what some humans thought. No being of Faerie would - or even could - wield iron, nor wear iron shoes. Wolfram - or tungsten, as it was officially called - was a more accurate mortal equivalent of the Faerie-derived metal that most redcaps favored, from what she'd been told.) "There you are. I was wondering where you were hiding from me."_

 _The redcap smiled mockingly at her. "And here_ _ **you**_ _are," he replied, not seeming to notice as a drip of blood slid down from his cap onto his face. "How kind of you to present yourself. I'll be sure to thank your Queen for her offering."_

 _She tensed her arms, then shoved the pikestaff up and away, making the redcap step back a couple of paces. "You're not going to be killing anyone else."_

 _His smile widened. "No? And how do you believe you're going to stop me, little girl?"_

 _In response, she simply brandished her sword. He chuckled, expression one of mocking contempt, and saluted her with his pikestaff. Then he attacked, making it clear that his first strike had been little more than a casual swipe._

 _She probably should have brought a shield, she decided as she ducked under one swing, deflected another, then hastily caught a third with her sword's guard. The redcap already had the advantage in terms of height, weight, reach, physical strength... She should have considered that his weapon being so long would give him one more advantage, especially if he kept his distance. Well, she thought, nothing to be done about it now. All she could do was get in close, then try and slip past his guard._

 _He laughed at her efforts, easily melting away from her attempted counterstrikes. "Now, really. If the Summer Queen_ _ **actually**_ _wanted to stop me, she wouldn't have sent one lone, untrained changeling, would she?"_

 _Not wanting to admit no one had actually_ _ **sent**_ _her anywhere, she didn't reply - and truthfully, she didn't have the breath to spare for it, anyway. It was probably sheer luck that she hadn't taken any blows, but that same luck wasn't extending to letting her_ _ **land**_ _any of her own._

 _Judging by his malicious expression, though, she probably didn't_ _ **need**_ _to say anything; he'd figured it out._

 _It didn't matter, she decided. Yes, she was outclassed. Yes, she was untrained. Yes, she was a changeling. She wasn't_ _ **just**_ _a changeling, though: she was the Summer Queen's daughter. As such, unlike other scions of fae-human unions, her magic was_ _ **already**_ _developing, and being out in nature was the easiest place for her to make use of it._

 _When the first vines began wrapping around his ankle, he tugged it free with little trouble... but he was distracted enough for her to land her first hit. It was little more than a scratch, but she'd drawn first blood, and they both knew it. That angered him enough that the next vines went unnoticed until they'd solidly wrapped around both ankles. He knocked her away with a powerful strike with his pikestaff, which he then smoothly swung down to slash at the vines. She rolled to her knees, got one leg underneath herself, and lunged forward before he could free himself, her blade sinking into his chest just under his ribs, angled upward. He dropped his staff in shock, the gurgling sound that he-_

"Josephine Yates!"

She started in surprise, falling over from her lunging position, the impact knocking the wooden sword from her grip. It took her a few seconds to reorient herself, the moonlit blood-soaked forest in her imagination being replaced by a mid-day, peaceful one.

Mostly peaceful, anyway. The birds nearby had been as startled by her father's unexpected presence as she had. "Papa?"

"What are you doing out here, Josephine?" He didn't sound angry - he never sounded angry, having far too kind a temperament - but he clearly wasn't happy that he'd had to come looking for her. He was still wearing his work clothes, indicating he'd come straight from the shipbuilding yard, and she felt a surge of guilt that she was cutting into his lunch break.

She'd inherited her red hair and light blue eyes from her father (though the curls in her hair hadn't come from either of her parents), though he was far more physically impressive. All her life, he'd been a sturdy, comforting presence, his work in ship construction contributing to his solid nature.

Her mother... was not around nearly as often.

"I was just playing," she said defensively, though she wasted no time in collecting her 'sword' and climbing to her feet. "My homework's already finished." Going to a human school was... interesting, though she always needed to be careful not to let anything Faerie-related slip. Magic lessons, when they happened, were so much easier.

She had, at least, had the foresight to wear a dark brown dress that wouldn't show any dirt - she didn't want to think about what a _white_ dress would have looked like by then - so no one would immediately know what she'd been up to unless they got a close look at her, and since she was only in the woods behind their house, she was certain she could clean up and change before that happened.

Her father must have agreed, as that didn't even seem to register to him as a concern. "You know you shouldn't be out here by yourself," he said instead as he began leading her back toward their house. "It isn't safe."

"I'm sure the Queen has people watching me at all times," she replied. Any guards that might be there were _very_ good at hiding, so to an eight-year-old, their presence wasn't all that intrusive. (Supposedly, by the time she was in her teens, that would change, and she'd value her privacy far more highly. She wasn't sure what difference a few more years would make, herself.)

"Whether she does or not isn't not the issue, young lady," her father told her as sternly as he could... which wasn't very. (Admittedly, that was in comparison to the few times her mother had used such a tone around her. She was pretty sure _nobody_ could out-stern a Faerie Queen.) "You're not allowed to use your magic out where someone might see you, and you know it."

"I'm sorry..." She honestly hadn't meant to, but when she'd been snapped out of her fantasy, she'd seen that she'd been _actually_ spawning vines to clutch at an imaginary opponent. Fortunately, they'd only moved where she directed them to, and even that had stopped, so anyone who came across them now - assuming they didn't get eaten by a forest animal or simply die - wouldn't think anything of them.

"I know you are, Josephine," he said, stopping and crouching down to give her a hug. "You just need to be more careful in the future. If you do something that draws too much of the wrong kind of attention to yourself, or end up getting hurt because of one of your games, your mother will take you away to Faerie to raise you herself. As much as I know you want to meet your sister, I'd miss you terribly if that happened."

"I will be, I promise!" she said, hugging him back as tightly as she could manage. She _did_ want to meet her sister - she'd heard about Hazel, but the duties of the Summer Princess (to say nothing of not wanting to attract attention to her little sister and place her at risk) had thusfar kept her from visiting - and having her mother around more often would be nice, but giving up her father would be _**far**_ too high a price to pay. As long as she behaved herself...

What was the worst that could happen?

* * *

"You're certain your source is trustworthy?" a sibilant voice asked. It seemed to have no discernible source, but only because the communications portal it was coming from was hidden behind a veil. It was masculine, though any human who'd seen the creature producing it would have been too horrified to give much thought as to the gender of the speaker.

They'd also die too quickly to figure it out, even if they did manage to try.

"Entirely." This speaker was a woman, her voice honey-smooth and dripping with seduction. "She always is."

"If anyone would be capable of getting past whatever defenses the Summer Queen has set up and killing her daughter, it _would_ be a daeva."

"And what is to stop the Queen herself from intervening?" a new voice asked. The speaker, a small creature, twisted and gnarled, was the only one of them actually present on Earth, hidden along with the portal under the veil. It was there as a scout, and would be acting as an observer, reporting on the outcome of the upcoming events. "As this involves her daughter, it _will_ count as a matter of the Summer Court. She will be under no restrictions as to what she can or cannot do."

The woman laughed. Had any humans been present, they would have been utterly intoxicated by the sound, regardless of gender or preference. "Don't worry about that. The Archdemon plans to seal off that entire area once the daeva arrives. She won't be able to tell _what_ happened."

The first speaker didn't seem to share her confidence. "If she _does_ find out, the **best** we could hope for would be to live _just_ long enough to regret it."

"You'll see..."

Gates began opening all over the ground surrounding the property where the youngest princess of Summer was residing. (Why she was there, living amongst the human cattle, none on the demon plane could understand. Given that it meant they had a clear shot at eliminating her, though, they were not about to complain.) Demonic entities of all shapes and sizes began emerging, heading for the house. In the air, almost two kilometers above and nearly a kilometer away, space itself seemed to warp and twist, then another portal formed.

This one was different than the others, though. Those had been stable doorways between worlds, crimson in color, and had been closed well after the being or beings using it had stepped through. This was a series of flashes of blue-white light, then a hole was punched in reality and a form zoomed through, the portal closing immediately. A moment later, another portal briefly formed, a blindingly luminous _something_ erupting from within it. The second arrival instantly flew after the first.

Down on the ground, the peaceful night had devolved into chaos. The hidden fae guards that Josephine had correctly guessed were present promptly engaged the demonic attackers. That they were outnumbered significantly seemed to make no difference to them... and it quickly became apparent why. Silvery blades flashed, precise and _intense_ magical fire burned clear through flesh and bone with little to no difficulty, and bursts of electricity paralyzed those who were too fast to be caught by other attacks.

None of the invading demons even cleared the property line.

This wasn't the first such 'unofficial' assault of this type that they had repelled. There were a number of powers in the supernatural world that had some problem or other with Summer in general, of their Queen in particular, and any time they learned of one of her children living in the mortal world, that child became an instant target. Growing up amongst humans gave them invaluable insight when it came to mortal affairs that impinged upon fae concerns, though, so the Queen persisted in allowing it. (She did, of course, visit as often as she could manage.) The princess's guards had gotten to be very good at their job, and thusfar had even kept young Josephine or her father from knowing about any of the attacks. From all appearances, this was going to be just another quiet night, from their perspective.

The first hint that things might not go quite so smoothly this time was when the sylphs reported they were under attack.

In and of itself, that wasn't completely unusual. It wouldn't be the first time an enemy had tried an assault from the sky. That was why there were sylphs up there to begin with, after all. They'd always been able to handle any airborne attackers with ease, though.

This time, however, the ground forces began losing contact with them. Communications spells bound the defenders together, but something was disrupting them to the point where no one on the ground could make out anything the sylphs might have been trying to say. Even then, they'd still been able to sense them... until one mental signature simply vanished. Then another. And another. Something up there was tearing through them, and worse, it wasn't even slowing down. The sylphs were evidently in pursuit, but it seemed to be ignoring them unless they were physically in its way. That kind of confidence was a bad sign - all the more so that it seemed to be warranted.

They would have been more worried, had they known what was transpiring up in the clouds.

Sylphs were air elementals. When it came to aerial combat, mostly invisible beings that pretty much _were_ the air were difficult opponents to beat, particularly when they could use the combat arena against you (tornadoes and creating vacuums to remove any air to breathe were popular tactics) and had poisonous bites. From the moment they'd been assigned to watch over the young princess from above, they'd maintained air supremacy.

Until now. Unlike those on the ground, they were able to sense the intruder... and it was unlike anything they'd _ever_ encountered. They were bound by their Queen to stop anyone attempting to harm her daughter or perish in the attempt, so that was exactly what they did.

It simply went _through_ the first sylph without even stopping. The being, they saw, looked almost human. It was female, covered in scaled armor of such a dark green shade it looked almost black, had reptilian eyes, and sharp metallic silvery 'feathers' in place of its hair. Sprouting from its back were the large black bat wings that held it aloft. In each hand it held a jagged black sword, sharp enough to cut the very air.

Literally, in the sylphs' case.

It was not as powerful as the Queen, but it could easily be mistaken for a lesser god, and it was clear that none of them stood a chance of stopping it. Nevertheless, they'd been given a command by the Queen. Even if they'd wanted to, they were physically incapable of disobeying.

Head-on attacks, strikes from above, from below, from behind... Nothing worked. Any of them that got close enough while attacking were slashed apart, or dispersed with some kind of violet energy beam.

That was when the _second_ intruder made itself known, smashing into the first from below and knocking it away from the sylphs.

This one looked like a shooting star. There might have been a person inside the ball of fire, but it was far too bright for even the sylphs to look at. They didn't have to _look_ at it to sense that it was of Summer, and whoever or whatever it was, it was clearly much better equipped to fight the winged woman.

It - _she_ \- must have realized that, because, despite the hateful look she cast at it, she immediately continued on her course, trying to outrun the Summer guards. When the new arrival pursued it, drawing far enough ahead of the sylphs that their senses were no longer being overwhelmed by the combined auras of the two, it became obvious who it must have been; all the more so when she ordered them to pull back and let her handle it... and they had to obey.

Only the Princess could modify the Queen's orders in such a situation (usually, even she couldn't do that, but the mortal world _was_ the Princesses' realm of responsibility, and the Queens gave them certain latitude), and this was only to prevent her subjects from throwing their lives away for nothing.

As the Princess chased the unidentified intruder toward the ground, an _insanely_ powerful burst of hellfire erupted from seemingly nowhere on the surface, shooting forward from a location in the woods toward the town in a beam big and thick enough to be seen from over a kilometer in the air. (This also made the sylphs realize just how far down they'd been chasing the intruder before being ordered to pull back.) Before it reached town, though, there was a muted flash, and it abruptly began bouncing off of something, heading off in another direction. When it reached a point roughly equal in distance, it was reflected off of something else. Again and again, until a massive five-pointed star. A pentagram, large enough to be seen from the air... and that completely cut Josephine and her father off from the rest of the world, to say nothing of their defenders.

And the intruder had gotten inside before it had enclosed the house within the pentagram in the middle.

The sylphs could only hope she hadn't been the only one to get through.

* * *

The house shook.

Josephine wasn't a really heavy sleeper, even after as active a day as she'd had. She'd taken care of her chores - she wasn't entirely certain that sort of thing was appropriate for a princess, but she had no real idea what _was_ , and didn't overly trouble herself with it - and gotten to bed on time, falling asleep even as her father was tucking her in.

The house shook again, and something glass fell down and shattered in another room.

It wasn't a big house - two bedrooms, one lavatory, a kitchen (though she was pretty sure some brownies her mother had assigned to the house took care of a lot of the cooking, as well as most of the cleaning), a dining room, a sitting room (where the fireplace that she sometimes - under _careful_ supervision - practiced her fire magic was located), her father's workshop, and an attic - but for just the two of them, it didn't need to be. Most of the furniture was carved from mahogany or walnut, any metal used something her mother had provided that was disguised as iron or steel, to prevent any suspicion. It was comfortable, it was _home_ , and it had never, even been shaken like that.

Now that she was fully awake, she could tell it was the ground itself shaking when it happened again... and then there was suddenly hellish red light streaming in through the closed curtains on her window. Even as young as she was, she could tell something was _horribly_ wrong. She scrambled out of bed, calling, "Papa!"

"Josephine! Stay in your room!" he yelled back, the _alarm_ in his voice making her ignore his order.

She'd never heard her father sound scared, before.

There was a thunderous sound from the front of the house, a titanic impact combined with splintering wood. She yanked her bedroom door open, not even caring that she was only wearing a white nightgown, and hurried out into the hall. She reached the entryway to the sitting room and stopped dead in her tracks, unable to understand what she was seeing.

Her father was sprawled on the floor, the occasional movement reassuring her that he was still alive, while two alien forms battled within her house. The fiery one was too painfully bright to look closely at either one, though she was able to catch a quick glance at the winged one when it was knocked across the room to slam into the far wall. It wasted no time in climbing to its - her? - feet... and saw Josephine.

It reacted instantly, launching itself at her, arms crossed, clearly intending to use both of its horrible-looking swords to take her head off.

She froze. She _should_ have been reacting, she knew that - running, trying to defend herself with her magic, _something_ \- but she couldn't move. Couldn't think. All she could see was the horrible creature bearing down on her.

Right up until the other form smashed into it, redirecting them both into and then _through_ the outside wall.

It took Josephine a long moment to shake off her fear even just enough to run to her father's side. "Papa?" she whispered, not wanting to catch that horrid _thing's_ attention again. She knelt down next to him, shaking him. "Papa, are you alright?"

There was a long moment of silence, and her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest. She could hear the fight still going on outside - it sounded even more violent, as if her rescuer wasn't holding back now that they weren't in the line of fire - and if she looked out through the hole they'd made, she could see what looked like a wall of fire. Even from inside, she could smell it, a rotting eggs stench that even she knew could only mean one thing: hellfire.

Before the implications of _that_ could terrify her too deeply, she was distracted by her father deliberately taking a deep breath, then saying, "...I told you to stay in your room."

"I don't think that would have helped," she defended. Before she could say anything else, there was a _**horrible**_ screeching from outside, and she could _feel_ something die, something that should have been able to live forever.

Silence reigned for almost an entire minute... then a woman she didn't recognize appeared in the improvised doorway.

She wasn't the creature, Josephine knew that. On some instinctive level, she'd known which of them had died. This woman seemed to be in her late teens or early twenties, but Josephine had been raised with Faerie in her life, and knew better than to assume that. Something about her felt the same as the Queen, but... less, somehow.

Summer, Josephine realized a few seconds later. The young woman - clad in armor that looked like it had been made from dragon scales, visible now that she wasn't engulfed in her fiery battle aura - was from Summer. _Was_ Summer, in a way. So there was only one person she _could_ be. "H-Hazel?" Josephine asked, stunned. Too much had happened in too short a time for her to be able to process it all. She was having trouble even taking in new details.

The woman - Hazel - was at her side in a flash, the subtle magical touch she used to check on her condition reminding Josephine so much of her (their) mother that she nearly started crying. "Are you okay, Josie?"

"W-wha...?"

Her sister apparently took that as a 'yes', sighing in relief and giving her a quick hug. She was shorter than the Queen (which, admittedly, wasn't terribly difficult; Josephine had never met another woman as tall as Queen Titania), with light brown hair that was tied back, and brown eyes. Vertically slitted eyes. Like hers might one day be, if she chose her fae heritage over her human side.

Josephine hugged her back, shaking so badly she might have fallen down had the Princess not been supporting her. It went on for a while - she couldn't have kept track of time right then if her life depended on it - before her sister let go, pulling back. "The barrier will be down shortly. I need to go check and make sure whoever enlisted the daeva's help has cleared out. Don't worry," she added before Josephine could protest. "Your other guards will be along shortly, and after something like _this_ , Mom will be coming here as soon as she can." She rested a hand on Josephine's father's back, healing energy spreading out from the contact. "Your father will be fine," she promised. She stood up, glancing at the wall of fire outside. As she'd predicted, it was already fluctuating and stuttering, its collapse imminent. "I'll see you around, Josie," she said, ruffling her sister's hair affectionately, then she was gone.

"Wow," Josephine said softly. Her sister was _amazing_. She'd heard stories, yes, but they fell far short of the reality of the Summer Princess. That, she decided. _That_ was the kind of hero she wanted to be, one day. She wasn't sure about the Princess part, but everything else...?

Absolutely.

There was one other thing she was sure of. "Josie...?" she echoed slowly, tasting it as she watched her father haul himself up off the floor. Josie.

She liked the sound of it.


	2. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** Still don't own Carmilla (the series), or any recognizable characters.

 **Author's Note:** Well, as it turns out, my job situation _is_ affecting my writing. Luckily, this is the story that no one seems to care about, so it going up a week later than my self-imposed schedule says it should likely won't be a problem. (And since the schedule _is_ self-imposed, I can really post updates whenever I want, I suppose. *lol*)

* * *

 **Silas University, Austria**

 **October 31, 1904**

Josie hadn't really ever wanted to attend Silas University.

For a long while, she hadn't been sure she would go to a human school at all. As her sister had predicted, immediately after the attack when she'd been eight, Queen Titania had come to check on her as soon as she'd been able... and had then brought Josie home with her, judging it too great a risk to let her stay in the human world, despite the benefits it would offer, both to the Summer Court as a whole and Josie personally. She was allowed to visit her father frequently (he'd explained her disappearance by truthfully telling anyone who asked that she'd moved in with her mother, with whom he'd separated; she was pretty sure some fae magic explained why no one found that even the slightest bit odd), but it had been made clear to her that she lived in Faerie, now, and unless she Chose humanity, that was where she would be staying. (Choosing one side of her heritage over the other had always seemed, to her, like she'd be saying the side she didn't choose simply didn't matter, that she had no use for it. That was why, even when she was living in Faerie, she'd never been able to do it.) She'd gotten used to that, and not having to hide who and what she was had been wonderful. (The rules and politics and such she could have done without, but balance was everything in Faerie, so she supposed she couldn't really complain.) Had she been inclined to resume her mortal education, she probably would have wanted to go to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Not only would it have been familiar surroundings, but her father would have been close by, and much easier to visit. (Most human schools didn't offer quite the same educational opportunities to women that they did to men, but a little magic would have ensured that no one at the university cared about her gender one bit.)

Silas University would not have even been a vague consideration.

She knew who ran it, of course. Everyone in the supernatural world did. She knew about the Gate, and all that was required in keeping it safe. She didn't like the cycle of sacrifices to keep the guardian creature somnolent and docile until such time as it was needed, but only the Gate's Keeper was permitted to replace it, and that was beyond even the abilities of a vampire as old and powerful as Lilith. Why she wouldn't try and arrange for someone to help her do something about that, Josie didn't understand. It wasn't like Lophiiformes was a necessary part of whatever duty or punishment that had lead to Lilith being the Gatekeeper. (Josie had no idea _exactly_ who had placed Lilith there, or why they'd done so. Knowledge was power, and therefore couldn't simply be given away, and even with her mother - who had far more leeway in telling her things than anyone else - she'd never been able to find anything equal in value to trade.) There needed to be a guardian beast, true, in order to deal with the obvious threats - invading armies, discovery by humans, or, most of all, something trying to get through from the other side - but it didn't need to specifically be _that_ one. Yet, Lilith simply continued with the sacrifices. It was well known that she cared little for humanity, so that wasn't exactly a surprise.

Maybe they were necessary. That didn't mean Josie wanted to be anywhere near the place where they happened, or the woman who carried them out.

The Queen had decided otherwise, however. Due to certain... events... in 1815, the supernatural community as a whole had decided that Lilith needed... _assistance_ , in overseeing the Gate. When she'd founded Silas University in 1871 in order to guard the Gate full-time, the Summer Court had been allowed to establish an outpost of sorts, to prevent anyone from physically or magically accessing the Gate, and to monitor and protect those not intended to be sacrificed to the Light. As payment for being allowed to remain in power for the entirety of 1816, the Winter Court not only supported them in that, but didn't take advantage of Summer devoting any of their time or attention to Silas. The Queen, being no fool, hadn't been inclined to trust them not to try and exploit that eventually, when Summer had dropped their guard, so the outpost - the Summer Society, as it came to be known - was run mostly by human mages - as well as a few regular human girls - who'd sworn their allegiance to the Summer Court.

Mostly.

It was an all-girls organization because it had also been created by the Queen for her daughters, so that those in the mortal world would have a place to go where they could belong, where they could be accepted, and where they'd have friends ('sisters', as it were) that they could really talk to... and because while it wasn't unheard of for a Faerie princess to prefer the company of those of her own gender, it wasn't overly common, either, and a princess being intimate with a mage could easily kill him or her. That was one of the reasons most princesses over the millennia, Summer and Winter alike, took either human or fae lovers.

(There _were_ male mages who'd also sworn themselves to Summer, of course. They simply had an entirely different location to watch over. Knowing what she did about it... Josie didn't envy them the task.)

Truthfully, the Summer Society was one of the few things that had made being at Silas not only bearable, but occasionally enjoyable. They knew whose daughter she was, but she had (more-or-less) gotten them to stop practically bowing to her whenever she entered the room. Respect was fine, but she wasn't there to be worshiped. She was there to attend classes, make friends, and watch over the Gate. (Not necessarily in that order.) They'd gotten used to her, over the past few years, seeing her as just Josie more than as the Queen's daughter. Besides, it wasn't like she was the Princess - if Hazel or Titania were there, the Society would act appropriately.

She was pretty sure Lilith had been as unhappy to have her register as a student as she had been to do so. They'd actually reached an odd sort of mutual understanding on that point: neither of them had really _wanted_ Josie to be there, and both would be counting down the time until she left for good. They'd then proceeded to stay out of each other's way as much as possible, with Lilith even having her children refrain from attacking or killing anyone on campus, so that the Summer Society wouldn't be compelled to intervene. They still fed on them, she was fairly certain, but if they did no real harm in the process, she was inclined to let it go. Vampires needed blood, after all, and she could hardly be upset with them because of a basic fact of their biology that they had no way to change.

Then there was Kheelan.

She smiled to herself as she walked down the paved walkway that lead to the Summer Society House, on her way back from her Underworld Geography class. If there was one other definite bright spot in being sent to school at Silas, it was being able to spend time unsupervised with Kheelan. Technically, he was her instructor in both Court matters and combat (those lessons that she didn't learn from her mother - or, more rarely, her sister - that was), but when she'd come of age, and had been noticing for a while how much he appealed to her, both in looks and personality... She'd taken a chance. Oh, she was sure he wouldn't have said anything to anyone else about it if he hadn't been interested (except possibly the Queen, which would have been mortifying, but she was sure Titania would understand - she tended to follow her heart, even to the point of letting it override her head, at times, and her children often inherited that from her)... but, to her delight, he had been. She was one of the _very_ few people he dropped his mask of professionalism for. (Not that he was all _that_ different when he did, but she was willing to bet almost no one else at Court knew what his smile looked like, let alone had ever heard him laugh.) In Faerie, they tended to have to be discreet, sneaking away to find somewhere private for any rendezvous. At Silas, though, if anyone recognized him, they'd just think he was there as a bodyguard... which wasn't _entirely_ untrue, really. She was perfectly happy to let him keep an eye on her body, too - _**all**_ of it.

She'd been born twenty years ago, as far as the human world was concerned, but due to time passing differently in Faerie, she was a _bit_ older than that.

For three years, she'd enjoyed an odd sort of freedom, even as she'd had a bigger responsibility than she'd ever been given in Faerie. Fortunately, they were between sacrifice cycles, as she wasn't entirely sure she _could_ ignore something like that. (She was pretty sure that was a factor in the Queen's thinking for sending her there when she did, subtly reminding Lilith that they were watching her all the time, not just once every twenty years. She was also pretty sure that Lilith did _not_ appreciate it.) She'd tried, over the years, to live up to her sister's example as best she could. She'd gotten to know Hazel since then, so she knew it wasn't just something that she did when her little sister was in danger. Hazel was a good person, kind and loving. She looked for ways to help people without indebting them to herself, even if she could only do so in an indirect fashion.

She'd also looked different than she had that first night, but Josie knew she hadn't been taking in details very well by that point, so she wasn't surprised. Hazel had recognized _her_ , of course, and had assured her that she didn't owe her anything. No one would tell Josie much about who it was exactly that had attacked her, though she'd learned enough over the years to have a general idea as to the who and why of it. Since she'd learned to defend herself, they hadn't tried again. If anything, she knew she had to be more wary of her relatives in the Winter Court.

She'd met her cousin, Maeve, a few times over the years... and every time she did, she decided all over again that she would be perfectly happy if that was the last time they _ever_ crossed paths. There was something seriously _wrong_ with that girl.

She felt the refreshing tingle of the wards as she walked through the front door of the Summer Society House, relaxing ever-so-slightly as she did. It wasn't that she believed the Dean would try anything - she knew better, after all - though she didn't doubt that Lilith would keep her mouth shut if she learned of any plots against her or anyone in the Society. Ever since the attack when she was eight, though, she was always a tiny bit nervous out in the open, especially at Silas, where she knew the number of guards her mother was allowed to (officially) post was limited by the terms of the Unseelie Accords. Sure, that also meant that anyone caught launching an attack upon her would risk the collective weight of _all_ of the other signatories coming down on them, but the key word there was 'caught'. That also didn't apply to those who _hadn't_ signed the Accords... though, unless they were mercenaries, such people were unlikely to come after the Summer Queen's daughter.

Inside the House, however, she _knew_ she was safe. The Queen had personally established the building's defenses, and they drew their power from Summer itself. Not only did that make her feel safe, it made the House feel like home.

That had been her last class of the day, which gave her plenty of time to attend to Society business. She hadn't really run for President of the Summer Society, but being a princess of Summer had wound up landing her in the position, whether she'd wanted it or not. As such, she'd decided to simply do her best to be the leader her Summer sisters deserved. Unless there was a crisis of some kind, she didn't really have to do much, so it worked out.

Not that she would have had much to do that day in any event. Preparations for the Summers' Samhain celebration had been completed days ago, and everything was already in place, waiting for sundown. (The rest of the student body, if they celebrated anything at all, would be observing the beginning of Allhallowtide, which consisted of All Hallow's Eve - or All Saints' Eve, depending on who you asked - All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day. Knowing her fellow students as she did, she was pretty sure that whatever celebrations that didn't involve the Dudley Chapel - the sole church on campus, which was only there because they were fairly well _required_ to have one - would include consuming significant amounts of alcohol.) They'd also made sure that their magical defenses were operating at maximum strength, as this was the one night of the year when the barriers between worlds were at their thinnest. The custom of wearing masks or costumes if you left your home that evening had come about so that any hungry beings or creatures that made it through to Earth wouldn't know whether or not there was something even stronger under that mask, waiting to devour _them_ if they got too close... because sometimes there was. If it also helped people avoid being recognized by any vengeful spirits that might be wandering around, then so much the better, she thought.

She would need to be joining the rest of the Council shortly, to get ready to lead the night's festivities. That meant changing into her ceremonial robes - green with gold trim, as befitted a Summer princess - but she had a little time left before she had to do that. She ascended the stairs - she'd found it a little odd that they were hidden, when she'd first arrived, but had quickly gotten used to that - heading for the fifth floor. The inside of the building wasn't entirely in the human world, as evidenced by how there were five large floors contained within a much smaller, two-story building. It was probably as close to Faerie as most of the Society would get, and even then the two realms didn't actually touch at all.

The Otherworld was a very, very big place. The biggest place, in fact - if there was a limit to how much space it contained, she didn't know what it was. Faerie was there, along with at least one hell dimension, Olympus, Hades... Well, the list went on. They were all located in different dimensions, though, countless realms that had one main thing in common: none of them were on Earth.

(No one had been able to tell her whether or not there was a corresponding 'heaven' dimension, or possibly even the actual Heaven of Christian religious texts, however, and she hadn't really had any chances to explore the Otherworld herself to try and find out.)

She stifled a sigh when she saw Tina waiting for her in front of her bedroom door. Christina Harper was ostensibly her second-in-command, but there were times when it seemed like the girl couldn't make a decision to save her life. While all three of the other members of the Summer Society's ruling Council tended to defer to her on matters, Tina took it one step further, coming to check with her before deciding pretty much anything Summer-related, and anything she _did_ decide on her own, she always needed Josie's approval on, even if it was too late by then to change anything. It could be immensely frustrating, and made her genuinely worry about the Summer Society's future once she graduated from Silas. She was going to have to appoint someone from one of the lower grades, that was all there was to it. It was figuring out how to do that without utterly crushing Tina's self-esteem that was the problem.

Compared to that, finding a more suitable candidate would be easy. "Tina?" she prompted in as pleasant a tone as she could muster just then.

Tina gave her a smile that was both apologetic and self-deprecating. "I know," she began, pushing a stray lock of auburn hair out of her face as she briefly looked down at the clipboard she was holding. She was already wearing her robes (plain white, as most of the Summer sisters' would be), her shoulder-length hair making a definite contrast against it. "But the Dean just had someone drop this form off, and it needs your signature by the end of the workday."

Which would be in a matter of minutes. This time, Josie _did_ sigh; this wasn't the first passive-aggressive stunt the Dean had pulled (that month alone), but she usually didn't do so on their holidays. Fortunately, it was a minor annoyance at most, as speeding herself up relative to normal time was something her mother had taught her back when she'd been living with her father. Time around her and Tina subjectively stopped even as she took the clipboard and began reading.

One never, _ever_ signed a form - contracts particularly, but even school paperwork - you hadn't read, even if you weren't part of the supernatural world. If you were, particularly if you were a mage or one of the Fae, it was even more important. The old joke about signing away your soul or your firstborn?

Not actually a joke, for them.

The paper she was reading through was just an acknowledgement that they'd received and would abide by the latest noise regulation form. Given that their Samhain celebrations never made all that much noise (they _did_ have loud festivities, at times, but this was never one of them), she knew the Summers wouldn't have any trouble abiding by it. She kept reading anyway, of course, to make sure nothing had been added, or any slight alterations made. So far, so good. (She knew this had likely been prompted by Zeta Omega Mu's latest party, which they'd been able to hear even through the magical sound dampening around the building. It was being applied equally to everyone, though, which was at least fair - and there hadn't just been Zetas at that party, so they actually _weren't_ solely at fault.) Once she'd finished carefully reading every word of the form, she signed her name on the appointed line and handed the clipboard back to Tina. "Go drop this off. I'll slow you back down to normal after you're safely out of her office." She'd asked her mother, shortly after her arrival at Silas, if it was appropriate for her to be issuing orders when she was only a freshman, and not even the Princess. Titania hadn't quite seemed to understand the question, and told her that she _was_ their princess, by birthright if not by station. Of course it was.

She'd still tried not to abuse that 'right' (as she kept being told it was), at least until she was actually appointed President of the Summer Society. Then, at least, she'd finally felt like she should have been issuing instructions to her Summer sisters. Even then, she'd tried limit it to things that actually needed doing, more in terms of what the Society needed than she did. Sometimes, though, she slipped. Forgot where she was and ordered someone around like she had the courtiers in the Summer Court.

She'd have had an easier time catching herself if any of them ever actually told her 'no'.

After Tina headed off - because this _was_ official Summer Society business, so even the Dean wouldn't be able to object about her magically "cheating" to make sure the signed form got there on time - Josie slipped into her room and took her robes out from the drawer they were tucked away in, spreading them out on her bed. She wanted to take a shower, first, wash away the random magical energies she'd accumulated over the course of the day, and it would be easier to do that when she wasn't holding Tina in an accelerated state. So she'd do that, she'd shower, she'd change, she'd make sure there was no _other_ last-minute business to attend to, then she'd finally begin preparing herself for the ritual, itself. It was, after all, going to be her last Samhain celebration at Silas.

She just knew it would be a night to remember.

* * *

If there was any downside to going all out on a ceremony, it was the cleanup afterward. Conversely, one of the perks of being President was that she could delegate that work to others.

Josie still helped out, of course. She didn't think she was above getting her hands dirty, so to speak, when it came to menial tasks such as that. (She sometimes suspected that one of the unspoken reasons Titania liked her changeling children - not that she'd had any other kind in centuries, if not longer... and sadly, Josie and Hazel were her only remaining living children of _any_ kind - to be raised in the mortal world: to avoid becoming overly self-centered and egotistical. Coincidentally, Maeve had been born and raised in Winter.) She'd helped make the mess, she could help clean it up. Besides, if she was working alongside her Summer sisters, it didn't really seem so much like work.

Also, the cleanup that night (and the more thorough one the next morning) helped distract her from Kheelan's absence.

It was nothing new. More than any other time of year (and there were a few others), he'd been absent from her side for every Samhain she'd been in the mortal world. Because there _were_ those predators running around, and they _were_ looking for those they could devour for their power... or just for food. While she might think of him in more unofficial (and far more intimate) terms, he _was_ technically her bodyguard, which meant he spent the evening fending off threats to her. She was pretty sure he reported to the Queen afterward, so she typically didn't worry overmuch when he didn't turn up promptly at the first natural birdsong that signified the end of All Hallow's Eve.

Typically.

This year, though, was different. He'd warned her specifically not to leave the House grounds - which she'd found odd, since she'd never done that any other year, and he knew it - and said that he might be late getting back. He'd been vague as to the reasoning, which was nothing new when it came to the Fae, though him doing so with _her_ usually meant he was acting on instructions from the Summer Queen or Princess. From what she'd gleaned, it had something to do with some kind of bizarre and unlikely set of circumstances that happened once every 3,000 years. (She'd asked if _that_ had anything to do with why she'd been sent to Silas when she had, which he hadn't known. She'd made a mental note to ask her mother later, even as she knew she wasn't likely to get an answer.) Lacking any other details, all she really knew was that this year would evidently be much worse than usual, and even by mid-morning she hadn't heard anything from Kheelan. Or anyone in Summer, for that matter.

So she worried. She focused as best as she could during her Comparative Dracōnēs Anatomy class (one of her favorite classes, as it actually applied to her life; one of her pet projects was dragon conservation - this past summer she'd overseen the establishment of a dragon refuge in a previously unoccupied pocket dimension in Summer), but once that was over, she'd gone right back to worrying. It hadn't been too bad until she'd tried to call her mother - just to talk and _maybe_ see how things were going there, of course - and hadn't gotten an answer.

Titania never ignored her calls.

She'd tried twice more - the Rule of Three was a real thing in Faerie - and gotten no answer those times, either. She _knew_ she wasn't going to be able to get much of anything done while she was in such a state, so, after reassuring her sisters that she was fine (she doubted they believed that anymore than she did, but they were polite enough to let her poor lies pass unchallenged), she headed to the second floor... and the summoning room contained therein.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd needed to use a summoning circle. If she wanted to talk to her mother or sister, she'd use a specially prepared crystal ball, or mirror, or even pool of water. (In an emergency, she could usually talk the Greek goddess Iris into relaying her message, provided she had a drachma on her - which was exactly why her mother insisted that she always did.) Failing that, she could magically call out to them, essentially asking them to come to her. As for Kheelan, he was always around, so all she had to do with him was raise her voice a little to ask him to do so. She'd summoned her mother perhaps a handful of times over the course of her life, and most of those had been back when she'd been learning _how_ to summon beings of Faerie, since she'd known both that her mother wouldn't mind being called to see her, and that she wouldn't be upset if Josie hadn't gotten things quite right at first. (Also, if she learned how to summon a Faerie Queen, summoning comparatively tiny fish would much easier.) She'd never summoned Hazel, and never _needed_ to summon Kheelan. She wouldn't even try for anyone else in the Summer Court. She might have known a lot of them, but this was a personal matter.

She'd barely closed the door behind her, however, when she felt the telltale magical shiver in the air that signified someone crossing over from Faerie... and Kheelan was there. She gaped at him for a moment in sheer relief.

Then she all but tackled him off his feet.

He remained standing only because he'd clearly been expecting it and had braced himself, but she still managed to rock him back a couple steps. " _There_ you are!" she exclaimed, fighting down a prickling feeling in her eyes. She was _not_ going to cry, damn it. "I've been calling, and calling..."

"I know," he began. "I'm sorry that-"

She shut him up by the simple expedient of kissing him soundly.

Something wasn't right, she sensed immediately. Ordinarily, he was perfectly happy to kiss her back when she was being so forward, but today he was remaining stiff in her arms. Standing at attention. Formal. Things he never did with her unless they were being watched. She broke the kiss and stepped back. "What? What is it?"

"Your Highness..." Her eyebrows shot up. She'd finally gotten him to stop calling her that, at least when they were alone, last year. "I'm not..." Her stomach began clenching; Kheelan was _never_ lost for words. Even if things were bad, if there was something to be said, he'd say it. Often utilizing stilted, formal phrases, but still, he'd know what to say. This... was completely out of character. "I'm sorry, Your Highness..." His next words made everything horrifyingly clear.

"Princess Hazel is dead."


End file.
